(4)Big Boss vs (13)Ridley 2018
Ulti's Analysis Because of how Smash hype was clearly affecting this contest, paired with how Konami basically murdered Metal Gear Solid, there was a ton of fear that Ridley would be able to pull the upset. Turns out Ridley wasn't too big for Smash after all! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IppO8vJP9WE HE KILLED SAMUS! OH MY GOD HE KILLED SAMUS!! But he couldn't kill Big Boss, or even get the board vote against him. This one was never close, though Ridley was clearly a step above from where he used to be, and Big Boss was clearly a step down. The effects of Smash and MGS's fates are pretty obvious, but they weren't going to close such a wide gap. For Big Boss, this match was a small measure of revenge for what happened in the Rivalry Rumble: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/4561-southeast-division-final-samus-vs-ridley-big-boss-vs-the Then again, does anyone care enough about the Rivalry Rumble to try getting revenge for it? Without looking it up, all I remember about that contest was Link winning, the Pokemon Trainers beating FF7 in a fake match, and Adolf Hitler making it into a GameFAQs contest match. There weren't many bright spots for non-Smash characters versus Smash characters in this contest, and even some of the wins in that position were rough. But this was one of the few bright spots. We are in a time line where Ridley winning this wouldn't have surprised people, but Big Boss shot that one down immediately. Turns out the old dog can still hunt! Lightning Strikes' Analysis What happened?: Battle of the big bosses. This match is a pretty good test of just how much Nintendo has boosted. Ridley is one of the two gatekeepers of Nintendo's low tier characters (more on the other one in the next day). Big Boss is a low elite. This should have been a 61-65% affair. However, the success of the Switch and especially Ridley's fan-pleasing confirmation for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate mean that he's facing a different Ridley. Ridley came out swinging, at times even looking like he would take the whole match during the board vote, but then Big Boss was able to keep a safe distance throughout. Still, this was a major moral victory for Ridley. What could this mean?: NintendoFEAR, even when it loses. This doesn't speak to Big Boss's weakness but to Ridley's new strength. It's not exactly the round 1 performance you expect of a potential division winner, but Big Boss has no real reason to weaken. If anything him effectively officially supplanting Solid Snake as the main character of Metal Gear should arguably boost him a little. He did have an old man pic but it was the identifiable MGS4 one and it's not 2005-2006 anymore. Really Ridley just looked good. The Nintendo boost is real, and hopefully next time Ridley can get a winnable match (in fact, outside of the Rivalry Rumble his record is as bad as Cecil's, largely due to bad draws). Safer777's Analysis BB would win of course. But people expected a higher percentage. But I have to say 2 things here. Ridley is in Smash so Smash boost and Ridley has taken part in 5 contests and has lost all matches too! Yet if you see the results here it doesn't make sense. So I searched a bit and man he always get the strong characters against him thus he loses. But seriously he can take down some characters in this bracket for sure now. Maybe next time he will win! So I can't really say that Big Boss here did bad. But man what is with these MGS names? They all look strange! Yeah I guess they are code names or something. Also the prediction percentage seems kind of low. Guess people saw Ridley and thought he would win since he is from the Metroid series. Tsunami's Analysis AKA the match where I started panicking re: Guru. Big Boss is very pic-dependent, since he can look a lot like Solid Snake sometimes, but not other times. I thought this year's pics were pretty good; you wouldn't mistake him for his son, but he still looked more like he did in his prime than as an old man. Ridley doesn't have any proper wins, either (though unlike Cecil, he at least got to ride Samus to some wins in Rivalry Rumble), but this is far from the first good showing he's had. He beat out Spyro for third place in a fourway, and he broke 40% in a threeway, which would usually be good for a win but the third character was one of the absolute weakest characters in the field. With Smash on his side, it feels like it's just a question of when he'll get his first win without Samus's help, not if. He just needs a better seed. Category:2018 Contest Matches